Game Development Blog

Making an Endless Runner – Part 0 – Endless Runners Suck

The Endless Runner genre has brought a lot to mobile gaming in its prime. The popularity of runner games has provided a fantastic entry point for scores of players to experience the gaming world. They are easy to learn and intuitive to play.

That being said, I still considered them thoroughly boring to both play and develop. Alongside many other others out there in mobile development, I generally think that they’re a dead genre. Larger mobile studios love these games due to the low-risk existing market, minimal investment into design, and ease of monetization through extra skins and in-game currency. Basically, running-game innovation is over, and the market is over-saturated.

This is the wrong approach.

Games are unlike movies, TV, and other entertainment media, as we are still creating new experiences and new ways to interact. There will always be new approaches to things in games. With that in mind, I sought to add my own take on an endless runner game by integrating the gameplay elements that I usually love to have in games but aren’t typical to the existing genre.

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About Jonathan

I'm a programmer and a gamer living in San Francisco, surrounded by coffee shops, craft beers, and macbooks. You might find me amongst my caffeine-injected brethren, staring blankly at Unity or Xcode. I'm always open to new game concepts, ideas, and opportunities to make games!